"They that hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck...."

Entries tagged with character

So I posted the last part of "In Loco" I'll probably get to before Summer of Giles, and while doing the formatting, I had been listening to Sondheim's "Merrily We Roll Along." For those who aren't familiar with the show, it runs backward through the lives of three friends, starting with them all estranged, their lives outwardly "successful" with all the things they thought they wanted, and ending with them together watching Sputnik passing overhead, their whole lives ahead of them. It asks the question, "How did we get there from here?"

I thought it might give me a new perspective, going back through the Buffy canon from the end. And so far, yeah, it's been interesting.

But something just happened that threw me completely. In the episode "Touched," Giles listens with the others to the Bringer speaking through Andrew's body, about how it serves the First Evil and how it will be around long after they're all dead. The Bringer is bound and helpless. And Giles picks up a knife and cuts the Bringer's throat to silence him.

Just trying to wrap my mind around this. I know it's often been remarked how Giles is anti-Giles in this final season. But I'd appreciate thoughts on this and what it might say about Giles, here and post Chosen. I can't write this story if I can't get back in the head space of these characters. And I'm not sure this Giles is someone I can understand well enough to write, or even to edit what I have to finish this.

I'm cutting and pasting in a bunch of quotes from the loose_canon board of responses I got to my ideas about Snape and Dark Magic. It's for my own use, and I'll put it behind a cut, but if anyone wants to see it, have at. First and foremost, though, a link to a most excellent essay by bohemianspirit. If you missed that one, it's worth a look.

My Snape essay got kinda taken over by this one. Thanks to the denizens of the Yahoo Group loose_canon for the recent discussions that led me to realize I need to get these issues straight before I can do much more with the story. They led me to pose the question there, in what sense is Dark Magic Evil? (Dark chocolate isn't, after all.) And here's what I've come to, for the purposes of my AU.

It strikes me now that, in addition to rereading this and doing a couple more for the Willow and Ethan of my Summer of Giles Story, I really need to do one for Snape. The Snape of "In Loco Parentis" is not the same Snape as the ghost in "Lost Boys." Neither are quite the Snape from canon, either.

That's perfectly okay. While fanfiction creates the expectation that your work is going to be highly derivative and based on a common framework, each writer brings his or her own "take" on the characters, puts them in situations quite unlike those we see in canon, and often has to choose among inconsistent clues from different places in that canon. And sometimes, while choosing, has to decide what kind of character he wants to spend time with.

So, that will be my project for the day, after helping out with the church Rummage Sale, getting Wee Hob a shiny new planner to write down his plans for completing merit badges this summer (and inexplicably, he wants me to teach him Latin, which, yeah, I'll do as long as he promises not to be a Dunderhead and actually does some homework) and cleaning up a bit.

But in the meantime, if anyone wants to weigh in on any of these characters, particularly how you see Snape (and Hermione) in "In Loco Parentis", I would love to see what has been coming across for you. I can already tell from a couple of reviews on this last part that I need to be doing a better job of making clear how this Snape is unlike the one in canon, and making the how and why of that plausible for the purposes of this story.

Except for his departure at the end of Tabula Rasa, does Giles ever truly leave Buffy unaided in her battles?

Throughout the series, he trains her for routine patrols and does research for more serious threats. When the chips are down though, he either fights alongside her: "Bad Girls", "The Zeppo," "The Gift," "Graduation Day," comes to her rescue: "Gingerbread," breaks his resolve to let her fight alone: "Helpless," "Once More with Feeling," "Two to Go/Grave." And when he knows she's really going to die, he resolves to go out and die in her place: "Prophecy Girl."

I think this is why the Council sent him in the first place. They knew it was exceedingly likely he would die for his Slayer, or put himself in harm's way fighting alongside her, and it seems from the way the Council operates that they were hoping for this outcome, and that his end would take this unexpected and uncontrolled Slayer with him, clearing the way for someone they could more easily control.

My question for the f-list: I'm sure there are objections one could make to this characterization, that Giles never truly lets Buffy go off without him. But, can an even stronger case be made for my premise above? And if so, what must it do to him, when he's suddenly the head of the Council, and he can no longer personally fight for all the girls he feels a duty to protect? When his decisions lead some of them to their deaths?

I have an addition to the "My Giles" list I wrote in November:

My Giles

no longer knows every Slayer by name. But he never forgets the names of the Dead, nor the circumstances of their deaths. Nor the faces of each parent, each sibling, when he breaks the news of their Slayer's sacrifice. He carries them all in his heart. It's his duty, you see.

***I got about 822 words written tonight, not couting the above, on my "Watcher's Love*" story (*new working title), rewound now to the point where it started to Jump the Shark. As a happy coincidence, I read some of Wil Wheaton's DVD commentaries on ST:TNG recced by liz_marcs last night, and some of his comments about people needing a Reason to enter or leave a scene really struck home. That was part of what was wrong with where I was trying to go-- I had lost sight of the Reasons why I was writing this story (and why a Documentary is So not what I want here....)

Been a long weekend. Especially adding in an emergency wedding gig which ended just about the time I was supposed to Be At the Concert Hall across town for the last performance of "Solace for Survivors." Both nights went off quite well-- I was hoping for no more than to have no train wrecks, after only about 7 rehearsals on this very difficult music, but it really touched people, myself included. It was quite exhausting, though.

And while I was enduring the wedding, and blocking out the priest's reading all the hopelessly naive things the happy couple had written about each other, I was reflecting on their second reading, from 1 Corinthians, 13:1-13. It's a discussion of what Love is, and one of the thing that struck me as applying to my Giles, post Chosen, was this: "And if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to move mountains yet do not have love, I am nothing. And if I distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, yet do not have Love, it profits me nothing." The passage goes on to describe what Love Does, but not what Love Is. And that makes sense-- we all of us know that Love is much less warm happy feelings than it is what we are willing to Do for those we love.

Here's my difficulty-- Giles Does a great deal for the world. But at some point near the end, probably dating back to Buffy's death in The Gift, he has stopped giving himself fully to those he loves. He's always been reserved. But he's also always been generous, with understanding and support as well as with research and willingness to thrust swords through things that threaten his family.

I'm extrapolating the emotional distance of S7, and assuming it continues and worsens as he takes on re-establishing the Council and takes responsibility of the fate not of one girl, but of hundreds, and it seems to me that he's deliberately avoiding love. He can't bear actually caring personally for anyone, because losing them hurts so damned much now. He pushes the core scoobies away and doggedly trudges away at his empty existence.

Anyway, I'm playing with how a man like this might act, might deal with a new attempt to engage him in the business of humanity. I have to assume Willow and Xander and Buffy and Dawn and Faith at least Tried before scattering all over the globe. I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts on this. I have some new scenes in mind, though I may not be sharing them for a while.

Since LJ was out all day, and I was for most of it, too, I wrote out a character sketch of Giles, similar to the ones I've seen Antenna do. I was surprised at how helpful I found it-- more so, I think, than if I had just gone with the first couple of sentences and tried to work it into a narrative. I need to go deeper, but this is a start.

And hey, does anyone know if the Buffy comic is out yet? And if so, if it's suitable for children? My little imp was recently turned on to graphic novels by one of his school buddies, and hey-- he's reading. I just need to know if this is something I need to read in the store, or actually buy and bring home.

Oh hey-- I'm going to get Jossed, aren't I? I was always sorry I missed out on that delight of contemporary fandom... Cool.